Cerebral Approaches
by baillierj
Summary: A sequel to "Grey Matters". Doctors Holmes and Watson have moved in together, but there's trouble in paradise: it seems that John will soon have to fight for both his job and his boyfriend-who-he-hasn't-exactly-told-anyone-about-just-yet.
1. A study in cold feet

John opens the bedroom door and saunters in, tearing his sweaty T-shirt off. He flings it in the general direction of a chair, missing it. While passing the dressing table that Sherlock, the preening tosser, had insisted on having, John grabs a small remote from it, presses a button and the mid-morning sunshine streaming through the windows disappears as the electronic control mechanism of the heavy curtains kicks into action.

He doesn't even bother taking off his socks before planting himself face-first onto the billion threadcount Egyptian cotton sheets Sherlock insisted they absolutely had to splurge on. 'All the cheaper varieties itch, John' had been the explanation.

John haphazardly pulls a corner of a duvet onto his aching and slightly swollen legs. He's been on-call for twenty-four hours straight, and every one of those hours has been hell. He has dealt with several odorously very unpleasant intestinal occlusion cases, one of which had projectile vomited on his clogs, a trauma call due to a three-year old being run over by a tractor wheel, several troublesome pain consults from wards, the evacuation of a spinal hematoma resulting from an epidural catheter complication, a disastrous airway during an emergency caesarean section, talking to the family of a patient whose fatal head injury had been the result of a suicide attempt... The list goes on.

John is emotionally drained, physically exhausted and completely incapable of enjoying his day off, because most of it will be spent in a half-comatose state. Whatever free time remains after he has slept for most of the day he will likely spend in a cranky and apathetic state.

It's Monday. After today there's still almost all of the workweek left.

John drifts off to dreamless sleep which, with any luck, will last until at least early afternoon.

He is awarded no such luxury. After ten minutes, John wakes up to the sound of the door flinging wide open and hitting the wall. Then the mattress next to him descends, the bedsheets rustle, and then there's something poking his ribs.

He groans.

The poking continues. It must be a finger. John grabs a pillow and buries his head underneath it, hoping his dismissive grunts will convey a clear enough message.

Something excruciatingly cold touches his toes and he cringes, pulling his knees up underneath the duvet. It's no use, because soon the back of his knees are being assaulted with what he now recognizes as Sherlock's icy toes. He yelps and shoves his... boyfriend to the other side of the bed.

The word still gives John pause. Part of the hesitancy is excitement and awe, because how could he possibly have conquered such a beautiful, delicate, brilliant creature like Sherlock. The other side of the coin is that he still can't fully wrap his brain around his new life. His new identity.

"You're awake," Sherlock concludes and sits up, wrapping his arms around his knees. The room is quite dark due to the curtains still being closed, but enough light is shining in from the hallway through the open door that John can make out Sherlock's triumphant smirk when he lifts the pillow from his face.

That damned smile. John knows exactly what it means.

"Excellent," Sherlock announces, "I should like us to repeat that thing we did on Wednesday, where you reach around me and-"

"Sherlock, no. I'm fucking spent. You can go do some more research and put more stuff on your stupid list, just let me sleep."

When it comes to sex, Sherlock is certainly making up for his inexperience with borderline manic enthusiasm. Like a proper man of science, he has been spending an inordinate amount of time online researching all manner of acts they can experiment with prior to more... invasive things, as Sherlock had succinctly put it, while twirling a forkful on spaghetti against his lips in a manner that was driving John crazy.

Crazy in more ways than one. In all honesty, as certain John is that he is very much in love with this man and Sherlock lights his fire like no other human being ever has, he can't say he's completely happy.

It's not just the issue of this being the first time that John has ever been involved with a man or the fact that it's the first time that Sherlock has been involved with anyone, that is keeping them from going all the way. It's also the fact that sex is the only thing in their lives in which John still has the upper hand experience-wise. As pathetic as it feels, John likes holding onto that little bit of leverage, because everything else in his life has been taken over by the menace that's currently standing - or more precisely sitting - between him and the sleep John so desperately craves.

Sherlock leans back to lean onto his outstretched arms, looking sulky. John closes his eyes.

A Sherlock who doesn't get what he wants is a Sherlock in a foul mood.

Usually John would try to placate, but he's too worn out to care at the moment.

"Well make me French toast, then," Sherlock says accusingly.

"I'm not making you fucking French toast. Get off my sheet," John snarls and pulls it from underneath Sherlock's thigh so he can properly bury himself under the covers.

"Sexual release can be a good way in which to relieve stress and burn off excess energy," Sherlock suggests. Where on Earth he's gotten the idea that John might currently have strenght to spare, John has no idea.

"If you've got so much excess bloody energy, you can find the hoover in the cupboard and do something about the mess downstairs."

"The housekeeping has admittedly been quite lackluster lately," Sherlock says absentmindedly, wiggling his bare toes.

"There is no 'housekeeping', Sherlock, there's just me. I've half to mind to hire someone, though."

Sherlock harrumphs and slides off the bed. "You're not fun at all today."

It's two in the afternoon when John finally manages to keep his eyes open. His mouth tastes like an old sock and he desperately needs a glass of water.

He drags himself off the bed, grabs one of Sherlock's silk dressing gowns and pads downstairs, yawning and scratching his left armpit as he enters the kitchen.

There are two half-eaten containers of Indian food left on the stainless steel counter next to Sherlock's ferrari-red espresso machine that is probably about to go on strike for overwork. John peers into the styrofoam containers.

When he's this tired post-call he often loses his appetite.

"I ate your naan," Sherlock announces somewhat loudly from the sofa. He has headphones on and John can hear a very quiet, rhytmic din coming from them. Probably one of Sherlock's beloved early Baroque albums.

Sherlock is on research leave for a month. He has mostly been spending it in various positions on their black leather sofa. The sofa which John thinks looks weird and feels way too firm. These factors together with a very low backrest make it infuriatingly uncomfortable. On the other hand, Sherlock's lanky features seem to be a perfect match for its angled contours.

Apart from emulating a headphone-wearing sloth on the sofa, Sherlock has also spent a couple of afternoons trying to perfect his experimental ventricular shunt design by cutting open a pig's head and sticking various drinking straws into it.

Sherlock had actually recently managed to get John to perk up his own research career. He had told John that if a physician wanted others to do things his way, he'd need to back up his claims with some original articles. John didn't have Sherlock's compulsion of beinding everyone to his will, but he did find himself enjoying breaking new ground and testing his own preconceptions on what was beneficial to patients in his working habits and what was not.

John had asked Sherlock a week ago if he was even going to actually look at the data he was supposed to be writing an article from, Sherlock had looked at him incredulously and announced that he would only require two hours for such an easy endeavour, and that he could well leave it to the last day of his leave.

"So you're just going to faff about for four weeks, then?" John had inquired, naively hopeful that this might mean that Sherlock would have time to partake in the upkeep of their frankly ridiculously big flat.

No such luck.

Sherlock grabs his laptop from the coffee table and begins clicking away with gusto.

John warms up the Indian take-away, eats half of it and then find himself standing in the sitting room, having a hard time deciding what to do.

"I should think Courchevel," Sherlock announces without looking up.

"Excuse me?" John asks.

Sherlock purses his lips. "Courchevel. For Easter. You'll like it. They've added a new lift to former Olympic slopes and there's a new Michelin two-star in the village."

It takes a moment for John to decipher all of this. "I don't actually ski, Sherlock," he says resignedly, curling his toes on the drafty floor before stepping onto the fluffy white alpaca wool carpet next to the coffee table, "Would have preferred somewhere warmer," John mutters.

He's still cold. Sherlock's thin dressing gowns don't exactly perform all that well in terms of body heat conservation.

"Nonsense," Sherlock says - his standard answer everytime John tries to partake in any decisions about their lives.

John trudges to work the next morning, bitter for having to leave a soft, warm bed full of soft, warm Sherlock behind. The man had been fast asleep when John had quietly slid off the bed and exited the bedroom to take a shower.

He arrives at the hospital a few minutes late. After swapping his own clothes for the nondescript light blue scrubs all operative field physicians and nurses wear, he quickly skims through the records of the patients he's been assigned to. When he spots his first patient being wheeled into the operating theatre floor he enters the induction area of his assigned theatre, yawning.

His first case is a healthy thirtysomething male, an electrician who's had the misfortune of developing a slipped disc in his lumbar spine that's threatening to cause paralysis in his left leg.

It takes over an hour to put the patient to sleep and then cart him into the OR, flip him over and arrange all the wires and tubes so that they won't get compressed during the surgery when the patient is lying face down on the operating table. John takes his time making sure the patient's face isn't being compressed against the operating table but arranged safely into a specially designed foam pillow.

Althought the case isn't very challenging in terms of the technical aspects of the anaesthesia, John is glad for a change of pace. Lately he's mostly been working with children - handling the anaesthesia for Sherlock's paediatric brain tumour surgeries.

With a little help from John, Sherlock has actually developed quite a good reputation in the paeds unit. Parents are still often aghast at his blunt bedside manner, but children appreciate his honesty and his uncanny ability to win them over by not shying away from difficult subjects and talking to them in a manner suggesting that they are competent decision-makers when it comes to their own bodies.

John never gets tired of witnessing Sherlock interacting with these children. It seems that the fact that the surgeon never flinches when faced with death and despair prevents him from being so shocked by the realities of what these families are facing, that he's capable of making the tough calls and having the difficult conversations that can reduce both parents and other staff members to tears.

John had once discovered Sherlock in an empty patient room, playing cards with a thirteen year old glioblastoma patient. They both grinned when John entered, visibly keen to share their secret pastime.

"What on Earth are you doing?" John had asked Sherlock warily.

"We're playing for Dr Holmes' lunch money," the patient told him.

"Sherlock, you can't gamble with kids," John had told both of them, raising his brows.

"Why?" the two of them had asked him in unison.

"It's illegal, for starters, for minors to gamble," John had replied, aware that there were two against one and he was in the minority.

"Who's going to know? Besides, it's not likely that he's ever going to get to try it at an age when it would be legal."

"Yeah, 'cause I'm terminal," the boy tells John so matter-of-factly that he could have been talking about the weather, and turns his attention back to Sherlock.

John had shaken his head, smiling, and left the room.

All in all, work had been mostly fun recently until the rumours started. Rumours that the hospital was about to shut down its entire children's unit, including the surgical wards, because they had not won their bid for foundation status and had thus lost a significant portion of their public funding.

While Sherlock's career seemed to be soaring, John felt as though his own was beginning to wither and stagnate. Even if the paediatric cases disappeared, there would be plenty of other subspecialty surgeries for an up-an-comer surgeons such as Sherlock to focus on. John, on the other hand, felt as though he had lost his footing. He had never held a permanent position in the hospital, even though he'd been employed there ever since he'd reached consultancy. If there were going to be cutbacks, his position would be likely to sink among the first ones. His stint as a children's neuroanaesthetist had largely been due to the maternal leave of his colleague Natalie Temple, who was going to return to work in a few months. She had a steady position in the roster, unlike John.

He had once complained about the state of things at work to Sherlock over a glass of pinot at their new favourite Italian restaurant. Sherlock had told him that they could well survive on his salary only, since he was without a doubt the main breadwinner with his patent royalties. John had scowled and finished the rest of his spaghetti in a passive aggressive silence. Sherlock hadn't even noticed he was upset.

Before Sherlock had bulldozed into his life John had been considering going abroad or signing up for another military tour. Now he couldn't imagine leaving, because in some way that was probably unhealthy, he felt responsible for Sherlock. Even when he tried to remind himself that Sherlock had gone through his adolescence, survived university and gotten through registrar training all without John, the desire to be there for Sherlock and to try to protect the man from the consequences of his social blunders still persisted.

John has seen glimpses of how much Sherlock must have struggled because gradually Sherlock has allowed him into those aspects of his life he carefully hides from other. Where others see a brat with a brilliant brain, John sees a person trying hard to overcome the social challenges of navigating life as a person with non-typical neuropsychology and an IQ in the range of intimidatingly intelligent.

John just wants to make things easier for him because he loves Sherlock. And during the time they've been living together Sherlock has seemed so happy it's downright frightening. Sometimes Sherlock even smiles at his patients. Others at the hospital have begun to notice.

And talk. Which is why they have an agreement: No publicizing the nature of their relationship until John explicitly tells Sherlock he's ready.

Sherlock seems to grasp the letter of the agreement but not the spirit of it. He seems completely oblivious to that fact that some innocent-sounding things can be read by others in a certain way that does not reflect well on John, or in a way that hints at the true nature of their relationship.

During an afternoon surgery of Sherlock's, while checking in on the registrar handling the case, John had tried to talk to Sherlock about the next morning's M&M meeting. Sherlock, who didn't give a toss about said meeting and had vocally let this fact be known, had judged it acceptable to interrupt John by asking what John was planning to prepare him for dinner. John had stormed out after noticing the nurses snickering.

John had long ago made peace with the fact that as an anaesthetist he would likely never be the star in the patients' eyes or in the tales they told of their surgeries to friends and relatives. He was fine with it. What he is not fine with, however, is people getting the idea that he is a servant at the beck and call of Sherlock Holmes, the department drama queen.

John suspects that it's only a matter of time before Anderson and the others can no longer resist the temptation of rent boy jokes.

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 **Notes:**

Oh, the joy of post-call blues... It's part of the lifestyle of all doctors in fields where call is taken. In the ideal scenario you've gotten enough uninterrupted sleep that the post-call day can be spent on relaxing and having fun but for the most part, you are a useless zombie.

M&M Meeting = Morbidity (=pertaining to illness) and mortality (=pertaining to death) meeting. A meeting during which recent patient deaths and significant care-related events are discussed. They provide a chance for doctors to air their grievances, discuss case management and receive peer support. We don't really have these in my country, but in the UK they seem to be a common thing.

Ventricle shunt = a device planted into a patient's brain to vent out excessive amount of cerebrospinal fluid


	2. By the skin of their teeth

Sherlock's research leave ends. He had stuck to his plan of typing up his article on the eve before returning to work. Sherlock had offered to add John into its author list, but John had declined on the basis that he didn't want to resort to intellectual dishonesty. He doubted Sherlock was above such shenanigans - the man had, after all, forged years' worth of counseling records.

The next week, life gets so hectic and John's on-call shifts so overwhelmingly frequent that they rarely see one another. When they do, all that John usually has the energy for is getting take-away, having a quick shower and then spending few hours in a borderline-comatose state in bed before the next morning dawns into another workday.

Sherlock's rest is even scarcer than John's. His surgeries often stretch way past office hours, and as a new pet project he is learning the ropes of brain surgeries extending to anatomical areas usually in the territory of operative otorhinolaryngologists. This entails endless hours of anatomy textbook-browsing in his spare time.

The department heads had agreed with Sherlock that this was, indeed, a worthy endeavour for their neurosurgical star. Arrangements for a well-known specialist in the ORL field to come in to teach a masterclass on such surgeries have been made and the visiting surgeon is due to arrive quite soon.

On Wednesday the closure of the hospital's paediatrics service becomes official news and John receives a request from the acting head of the anaesthesia unit for 'a chat' two weeks from the upcoming Friday. John has a fairly good guess that this nice little chat might end in a less-than-golden handshake.

It's Friday morning. John is unlikely to see Sherlock during the weekend, since his brother Mycroft had announced via text message that a visit to the family estate was due. Sherlock hadn't asked John to accompany him, nor had John expected such an invitation. What they had was still way too precarious for meeting the parents.

Sherlock has an OR case booked that will likely last at least four hours. John had swapped cases with another consultant, hoping that a shared case would give them a chance to enjoy each other's company in a less emotionally loaded environment than their home.

Not that the OR is a very stress-free environment. Not when occupied by Sherlock Holmes. Even though Sherlock's smitten bliss is obviously improving his mood outside the operating theatre, when performing his surgeries he was still the same despot as in the days before John had wandered into his peripheral vision.

John double-checks that he has all the drugs drawn that he will need during the induction. He also checks that certain emergency medications are availably - they are rarely employed but when needed, they have to be within reach of his fingers immediately.

They're doing an elective aneurysm clipping. There's nothing particularly problematic about the case per se, but such surgery always requires skill and vigilance from both the surgeon and the anaesthetist. Anything can happen, from a profuse bleed to primitive nervous system reflexes being activated when the surgeon advances through delicate structures.

It takes John some thirty minutes to start two large-bore IVs, put the patient to sleep, insert an arterial line and a central line and stabilize the patient's hemodynamics. Sherlock had made his entrance sometime during the preparations and is idly flipping through the patient chart near the door while John makes a final check that the intubation tube and the vascular cannules are taped securely in place. Sherlock isn't scrubbed in yet - he doesn't need to for this next part.

John looks up after making some adjustments to the ventilator after receiving the first arterial blood gas result strip, and gives Sherlock a controlled smile. Sherlock doesn't smile back, but this is nothing out of the ordinary. John has observed him in the OR plenty enough to know that the man's relaxed posture is a front - in reality he's slowly drifting towards a focused, single-minded surgical mode that leaves no room for social niceties.

Some surgeons joke around, hum along to music and swap gossip with scrub nurses when everything is going great in theatre. When they grow more silent and the quips stop, anaesthesia will know that shit is about to or has already hit the fan. With Sherlock, not much in his demeanour changes between smooth sailing and frank disaster. John has told him that he should communicate more - not just yell at people two minutes after assuming they've telepathically deduced what he wants and needs. Sherlock had actually agreed after John had explained that it would ensure anaesthesia's better performance and thus would diminish the need for Sherlock to have to waste his precious time paying attention to anything else than the surgical field.

John steals a glance at the monitors before moving to the opposite end of the operating table to join Sherlock who has donned a pair of gloves. John grabs hold of the patients head, holding his precious intubation tube between two fingers, forefinger hooked under the patient's chin to prevent the tube from dislodging. The scrub nurse attaches a Sugita - a metallic half-circle with holes for screws - to the edge of the operating table. While John holds the head, Sherlock twists and otherwise adjusts the contraption to the position he wants, and with quick and precise fingers twists in the four screws through the scalp into the bone to hold the patient's skull firmly in place. Even a minuscule movement during such delicate surgery can lead to the rupturing of a vessel or tearing apart of the aneurysmatic sack itself.

Sherlock takes a step back after twisting the fourth screw in and nods to John who returns to the other side of the theatre. Sherlock's gaze sweeps across the whole surgical setup, checking that there are no missing instruments, the microscope is properly adjusted and an acceptable scrub nurse is on duty. He then rolls up his dress shirt sleeves and disappears into the hallway to do a surgical wash.

John fetches a chair from the corner of the theatre and wedges it between the anaesthesia workstation and a monitor hung from the ceiling, which will soon provide him the same view that Sherlock himself has through the surgical microscope equipped with a camera. The system is new but already much loved by the anaesthetists - they no longer have to deduce from the grunts and curses of the surgeons what is going on in the surgical field.

The first hour of the surgery in uneventful. Sherlock makes his way through the cortex and the midbrain to reveal the Circle of Willis, a convergence of major arteries where most brain aneurysms are located.

It never ceases to amaze John to see these structures through the surgical microscope. The vessel walls are thin and translucent, and it's possible to make out the shadows or single red blood cells traveling inside them. It gives him chills to be reminded of how fragile the whole system is.

"I'll need a temporary clip on the MCA," Sherlock announces and John hums in aknowledgement. He raises the oxygen percentage in the ventilator settings to a full hundred and injects a dose of sodium pentothal into the central line to suppress the electrical activity in the patient's brain in a manner that will lower the brain energy needs and hopefully protect it from damage during the time when a major artery in the brain is temporarily occluded. The time that brain tissue can survive after being deprived of arterial flow is limited. No neurosurgeon uses a temporary clip in a major artery this unless it's absolutely necessary in order to be able to reveal and clip the actual aneurysmatic sack.

"Burst suppression done," John tells Sherlock, who frowns in concentration. After a couple of minutes, a long temporary clip resembling a hair pin is firmly in place in the middle cerebral artery. Sherlock then sets to work exposing the actual aneurysm, and deciding which permanent clip to use on it. John remembers that this particular case has a narrow neck which, logically, would be easy to clip, but those types of aneurysm structures can be quite fragile.

Time is of the essence here. They are tracking the minutes of how long the temporary clip is in place. John has maximized the protection he can give the patient with the means of anaesthesia methods, and he can now do nothing but wait.

He wanders closer to the draped head of the patient to watch Sherlock's hands dance around the small opening of the surgical field, framed by the line of blue plastic clips holding the scalp away from the wound. Sherlock is preparing to open the temporary clip in the larger artery to test whether the smaller clip will hold.

John has done some smaller routine surgical procedures himself during his registrar training - removing diseased appendixes, inserting infusion ports, opening boils, suturing complex wounds - but nothing that he has done comes even close to the precision required here. John's admiration for Sherlock's skills has not diluted during long hours spent in the OR together. Even during the most stressful of moments, his hands are unwaveringly steady and his movements purposeful. He doesn't second-guess or hesitate, like some of his colleagues. He operates on brains like he plays the violin - striving for perfection with a creative flair.

John sometimes finds himself thinking about the violin and these surgeries when those fingers are employed in a very different kind of play between the sheets. It's strangely not off-putting, because all of it is Sherlock. It's impossible to separate one aspect of him life from the others - the surgeon from the lover, the violinist from the clever diagnostician. Sherlock doesn't compartmentalize like that - some deep-seated insecurities notwithstanding that he only allows John to see, Sherlock is always himself, all of himself, all the time.

And right now all of Sherlock is taut like a wire, because something has gone wrong.

Very, very wrong.

John inhales and his gaze narrows as he steps backwards to see the monitor better.

"Suction, you bloody imbecile," Sherlock retorts at the scrub nurse.

Now that John has gotten a good view of both the vitals monitor and the microscope screen, he knows why.

The surgical field is completely red. The aneurysm has ruptured around the clip.

"Temporary clip counter!" Sherlock commands and John tells him that they don't have much maneuvering space left in that respect. The temporary clip had already been there for the maximum allowable time before permanent damage is likely.

"Dr Holmes, would you like Dr Lestrade to be called in?" the scrub nurse asks, alarmed.

Sherlock bites his lip briefly, his hands still hovering above the surgical field. John has never seen him hesitate to request the help of a colleague in a tight spot. Dr Lestrade, head of neurosurgery, is still his supervisor since he's doing a fellowship and Sherlock is not supposed to handle these sorts of scenarios all on his own.

Suddenly Sherlock looks up with an mischievous glint in his eye. "I assume you have adenosine drawn?" he asks John and John nods.

Sherlock grabs the gauze the scrub nurse is offering him in the tweezers he is holding, and presses the wad onto the bleed.

The nurse repeats her suggestion of calling for Dr Lestrade.

Sherlock raises his head, gaze narrowed, looking John straight in the eye. "No, nurse. I... We've got this," he says in a confident, stern tone.

John springs into action.

He runs to his drug tray, yelling at the OR supervisor nurse to order 8 units of fresh-frozen plasma, eight units of red blood cells, 16 platelet units, and to get them all prepared for emergency transfusion as soon as bloody possible. John then grabs his adenosine syringe while Sherlock attempts to grab hold of the ruptured aneurysm neck to stop the bleeding. It proves impossible because the pulsating bleed is still overtaking the entire field despite heavy suctioning by the scrub nurse.

John unscrews the cap off the central line stopcock closest to the patient, and injects a dose of adenosine.

It takes about a second for the patient's heart to stop - just enough time for John to quickly wipe his cold, sweaty palms onto his scrubs. "Go!" he yelps at Sherlock when the monitors began wailing and the ECG turns into a straight line.

After a moment of frantic suctioning, the field is now much clearer since no new blood is pulsating in through the torn aneurysm neck anymore.

Sherlock grabs a new, wider permanent clip from the surgical tray - and drops it. He curses loudly, and accepts another that the nurse passes to him.

John has stepped closer to the patient's head without even realizing. The monitors continue their frantic crescendoing wail since the patient is still in asystole - effectively but temporarily lifeless. John grits his teeth and reminds himself that this is what it takes to give Sherlock a chance to salvage the scenario.

And that he does. With some of the most complex maneuvering John has even seen, Sherlock slides the new clip into the minuscule stump of the aneurysm. Then he steps back, practically holding his breath.

The OR falls silent. The OR supervisor has run into the hallway service elevator to retrieve the much-needed blood products. All remaining eyes turn towards the ECG on the anaesthesia workstation vitals monitor.

After another minute that feels like several lifetimes, there's a blip on the monitor, and the patient's own sinus node returns, kicking the heart safely back into action as the adenosine's short-lived effect ends.

After a collective sigh of relief, all eyes then fly back to the microscope monitor, or in Sherlock's case, the eyepieces of the surgical microscope.

The field remains clear of blood. The new permanent clip holds.

Sherlock lets out what sounds like half-choked chuckle, blinks slowly and looks at John with a serene expression.

John grins. "I'd high-five you if you weren't so damned sterile right now," he tells Sherlock.

After the patient has been brought out of anaesthesia and his neurological functions judged to be intact, he is carted into the waiting arms of the post-anesthesia care unit staff.

John fetches Sherlock from the surgical floor's office area and they head out to lunch. While they walk to the cafeteria, Sherlock idly rants about the uselessness of the hospital's new voice-recognition system for patient record dictation.

They're still somewhat giddy from the adrenaline, but the worst - or best - is starting to wear off, leaving in its particular kind of post-emergency nervousness recognized by most doctors. It represents awareness of dodging the bullet - knowledge of what easily could have transpired.

Opportunities to celebrate an emergency that has ended well are scarce because such pleasures always prove short-lived. They always get promptly diluted by the neverending river of new challenges offered by new patients.

They don't talk much during lunch. Sherlock seems lost in thought. He seems to be reading an article on neuron-specific enolases but despite being a quick reader, he doesn't turn the page once during the whole lunch. John flips through sports scores on his phone.

Now that the thrill of their success is starting to wane, John feels slightly bitter. These are the sorts of cases that he got into the field of anaesthesia for in the first place. If and when his job gets downsized, there's no guarantee that he'll be able to land a job in a neuro service. There's not even any kind of guarantee that he'll find anything better than moonlighting at some smaller unit, sticking in spinals for hernia repairs, dosing propofol for hysteroscopies and doing other such minor bread-an-butter things until kingdom come.

John glances at Sherlock, who is stretching his neck while tearing a rubbery piece of bread into tiny bits.

They are sitting quite close to one another, but not close enough to rouse suspicion.

/main

Notes:

Asystole = 'flatline'; the heart has stopped and not even the so-called sinus node that emits control impulses for the heart muscle is doing anything. Defibrillation won't help and is not recommended when this is the rhythm a patient represents with. This is *THE* biggest pet peeve for medical personnel in fictional medical dramas: they're always defibbing asystole. Probably because even non-medically trained viewers can figure out that flat line on the heart monitor is probably BAD. Still, I beg of you screenwriters, stop doing this poppycock. Pretty please? :)

(In case you were wondering what rhythms DO require prompt zapping with electricity, they are ventricular fibrillation (V-fib) and ventricular tachycardia (V-tach). Here's a good overview of what all of these rhythms look like: .)

The dramatic trick that John does with a drug called adenosine is no urban legend - we sometimes have to stop the patient's heart in order to momentarily control the bleeding when there's a major rupture and the surgeon desperately needs some extra help. I haven't had to do this yet - I've once held that syringe in my hand, ready to inject, but luckily the surgeon managed to control the bleed before we had to employ the drug. If the rhythm control mechanisms of the patient's heart are healthy, the sinus node will start up again all on its own after a moment.

Otorhinolaryngology (ORL) = a medical specialty that deals with the diseases of ears, noses, throats and all the structures close to them. When a brain tumour is growing somewhere between the nose and the brain, at least here in the northern bits of Europe neurosurgeons and ORL surgeons on occasion work together on such cases. Another area that often requires both types of surgeons are tumors located in the vicinity of the inner ear (for instance acoustic neurinomas).

The taping of things onto the patient is an art form. There are many schools of thinking when it comes to strappin' down the intubation tube - what sort of tape to use, where to put it, how many pieces of it need to be twisted around the tube. I am a firm believer in 'more is more' when it comes to taping. Sometimes we suture cannules into the patient's skin to keep them securely in place.

The Sugita head frame is not the only option for securing a patient's head into place during neurosurgery, but it's the one my hospital uses most frequently. Plus the name is cool. I will readily admit it looks like something invented by the Spanish Inquisition but luckily the patient is always under general anesthesia and thus heavily pain-medicated, when it is fastened on and taken off. The surgeon does this and usually it's the anesthetist who holds the head (at least where I work) in the meanwhile. A sleeping patient's head weighs a TON (which is a very good reason to hit the gym every once in awhile) and the screw holes tend to bleed onto my shoes when the Sugita is taken off.

A drawing of the circle of Willis at the bottom of the brain. The MCA is an abbreviation for the middle cerebral artery.

Burst suppression = a state in which the brain has very little activity and thus uses/requires less oxygen. This can be induced with certain anesthesia drugs such as sodium pentothal during surgery. It is also used in the treatment of status epilepticus, an extended epileptic episode that hasn't responded to regular treatment.

Spinal = a spinal nerve block

Hysteroscopy = taking a look inside the uterus; usually quite a minor procedure.


	3. Bone of contention

Sherlock takes the last train home from Surrey on Sunday evening. He climbs into bed a little past midnight, and doesn't try to initiate any kind of contact with John.

Usually the lateness of the hour is no deterrent for Sherlock to try and seduce him.

They've barely hugged during the past two weeks.

A few hours earlier, sitting in Sherlock's usual bar stool in their bleak, chrome-and-black-stone filled kitchen, John realizes how much and how acutely he misses his brilliant, mad cyclone of a boyfriend.

Boyfriend, who he hasn't even told his mother or his sister about yet. He keeps putting it off, convincing himself that there is no hurry, that he has ample time to first wrap his brain around it all and then make the big reveal.

John's thoughts linger back to other things he hasn't done yet. Sex-wise Sherlock, the virgin, is the one who's the most enthusiastic and the most curious. From John's perspective there shouldn't be anything to it at all, but somehow in his mind going beyond shared handjobs and blowjobs would mean some sort of a permant step towards... what?

Bath houses and pride marches? Or some other type of stereotypical bullshit that an educated physician such as John should be able to dismiss outright? Why does he think it'll change him somehow? Brand him in some way he can't back out from? It's ridiculous, and Sherlock deserves better.

He wants Sherlock. Badly. This he has never doubted for a second. And he couldn't imagine that this would ever change. He wants to give Sherlock everything, to make him drown in the amount of love John feels when Sherlock curls up to him in bed, all bony angles and warm skin, faint smell of expensive aftershave and blackish curls tickling his nostrils.

Why couldn't it be that simple? He needs to stop thinking too much.

John lets his forehead drop to the raised part of the cool, hard marble bar counter separating the kitchen from the dining room. I'm an idiot, he decides. Sherlock would probably agree.

They don't see each other until the next afternoon, when John comes home from work. Sherlock has been on call, and as per some new regulations has actually been able to be off duty the next day. Not that he really needs it - unlike John, he only seems to kick into a higher gear when he's had to stay up all night operating on emergency cases.

Sherlock never sleeps post-call. Instead he uses the extra free time to run errands, catch up on reading for his latest research projects or accept a sales or drug rep's offer for a lazy, expensive lunch.

After exceptionally taxing call shifts John has noticed Sherlock getting borderline manic - talking more than usual, faster than usual, his associations full of insane tangents as he follows John around the apartment, gesticulating wildly while getting himself worked up over something quite minor like a broken door handle in his office at the hospital. John's usual solution is to sit him in front of the TV to yell at some ridiculous reality show for awhile.

Today, John makes a pit stop at a John Lewis Foodhall on his way home from work. He's in the mood to cook something nice for the two of them, perhaps coax Sherlock to spend some time with him outside work and the bedroom. They haven't talked all that much lately.

After arriving at home, John empties his bulging grocery bags. He tentatively calls out to Sherlock but the only reply he gets is the sound of the shower running. After about fifteen minutes the bathroom door opens, steam puffing into the hallway.

"You used up all the hot water, didn't you?" John chides in the general direction of the bathroom, smiling. He wanders into the hallway and leans on the bathroom doorframe.

Sherlock is shaving with the tap running. There goes whatever hot water may have been left in the boiler. He's clad only in a pair of emerald boxers. After tapping his face with some aftershave that smells mildly herbal, he turns his face towards John and raises his brows. "You're home late," he points out, and pushes past John, heading to the small downstairs bedroom that now mostly serves as a walk-in clothes closet.

"Hungry?" John asks encouragingly.

Sherlock begins flipping through his set of suits and selects a dark grey one. "Not really, but can't be helped. I'm headed out to dinner."

John crosses his arms. "You never said. I've got a couple of well-hammered steaks waiting. You've been eating so little lately you need the iron lest you go anemic," he teases.

"I'm sure the steaks will keep," Sherlock replies with a reserved tone. He pulls on his trousers and starts buttoning up a crisp white shirt. When he grabs a grey silk tie John gently coaxes it from his fingers, swings it around his shoulders and begins creating a not.

"You like doing that," Sherlock points out after a moment of silence, head bowed down to watch John's hands.

"Why wouldn't I? You look gorgeous. What's the occasion, then? The dinner, I mean," John asks with a hopeful note.

The tie is done. Sherlock flicks his wrist in a dismissive gesture and begins rummaging around a large oak wardrobe for a pair of dress shoes. "That idiot Arundel has finally reached consultancy and Greg is hosting his traditional farewell dinner."

"Oh. Good for Arundel then."

"Good riddance, more like it," Sherlock replies, head still buried somewhere inside the wardrobe.

"You do realize him getting licenced will only mean that there will be a new rookie you'll have to participate in teaching?" John points out.

Sherlock does not reply but emerges holding a pair of black, slightly dusty shoes. He grabs a T-shirt due for the laundry basket from the bed and uses it to rub off the dust. Before finishing the other shoe, he pauses, frowning, and looks at John as though he's had an epiphany. "Why do you always use such vocabulary to describe my looks?"

"What vocabulary?" John blinks, confused.

"Words usually utilized in describing the aesthetics of women. 'Beautiful', 'gorgeous' and so on."

John smirks. "I didn't know that was against the rules. They're just words, Sherlock, and I mean every one of them. You're lovely."

Sherlock purses his lips, looking like this Johns answer has not dissipated whatever it is that's bothering him. "I have been wondering if such vocabulary was a deliberate decision on your part, that you might think it fits."

John blinks and then pinches the bridge of his nose.

Not this again.

He wants to throttle Anderson for unwittingly stirring the soup of Sherlock's insecurities. "Don't tell me this is about the girly arms thing. Like I've told you a thousand times, your arms are fine and whatever some snotrags told you at Eton when none of you even had proper pubic hair yet, you are not girly."

Sherlock's expression is a mixture of bewildernment and annoyance. "I was trying to discuss your feelings, not mine. Let me rephrase: does it console you to be the more traditionally manly counterpart in this relationship?"

John's eyebrows knit together. "Sherlock - what? Why would I need consoling?"

"According to certain textbooks I've consulted, it seems that your recent symptoms fit either those of PMS or a some sort of a grieving process. I highly doubt it's the former. I've discerned that this process has something to do with me. I have no idea how to intervene."

"I- what?!" John shakes his head and spreads his arms. "I have no bloody idea what on Earth you're on about." John curses the fact that Sherlock still seems to be planning on leaving the apartment shortly. There's clearly some issue here that is in dire need of further discussion, and the fact that Sherlock is the one initiating such a talk is nothing short of mind-blowing.

Sherlock now looks slightly bored and a little frustrated. John wonders if there's something he could've said or done differently here, since Sherlock looks like he's about to give up on him.

"Are you sure you want to go to that thing? Wasn't I invited? I thought Greg's dinners were always bring-your-spouse type things." Even if they couldn't continue their conversation at the gathering, at least they'd be together and John could try and map Sherlock's strange mood a little more closely.

Sherlock regards him with a wary look. "Yes, it's a 'plus-one', as Greg colloquially put it. Avec. Couples' invitation. I didn't think you would ever agree to do that."

John is taken aback. "You don't want me there?"

Sherlock ties his shoelaces with sharp movements, not looking up. "Not what I said. What I meant was that I never asked you, because I was certain you'd say no." Sherlock's tone is resigned.

John doesn't really know how to react. While it is true that an evening spent drowning in red wine with the entire chorus of the hospital's neurosurgeons isn't really John's idea of a fun night out, he knows how much Sherlock abhors these sorts of things and how he usually prefers to have John with him to draw at least some of the attention away from himself.

Sherlock had once described such occasions as 'purposeless social minefields designed to promote team spirit among some, while taking others down a peg through the excuse of inebriation-lowered inhibitions'.

"It's a party, Sherlock, not a Pavlovian Experiment," John had told him. He had only received a haughty snort in reply.

Sherlock stands up, straightens his tie and leaves the room. John hurries to the entrance hall after him.

"I'll be fine, and I know how you appreciate being spared from all those terribly awkward questions," Sherlock says pointedly and grabs his coat.

He doesn't actually sound all that bitter or upset. It's as though he's just stating a fact he assumed John is already familiar with.

"We can have steak tomorrow," Sherlock adds graciously and rattles his keys in his pocket to make sure he's got them with him. He then purses his lips, turns his coat collar up and disappears down the stairs before John can figure out how to reply.

Sherlock returns home after three hours. He had once asked John what the shortest possible but still polite amount of time spent at a dinner party would be. He had accepted John's half-joke of 'forty minutes past pudding' as some sort of gospel.

Uncharacteristically, Sherlock heads straight to bed, eyes slightly glassy and breath smelling of cheap tanninic red wine.

"That bad, huh?" John quietly asks his quietly snoring form after slipping into the opposite side of the bed an hour later.


	4. The Kiesselbach Fall

They have a passionless argument about holiday schedules and travel destinations in the car en route to work. No compromise is reached.

John had plucked up the courage to insist on somewhere sunny and relaxing, only to learn that Sherlock is still dead set on breaking his neck daredeviling down some mountain in the French Alps.

Sherlock heads to an adjoining building for the neurosurgical unit's weekly meeting without changing into scrubs. After fetching a white coat from his locker, John walks up the to the preoperative assessment clinic, not looking forward to half a workday evaluating old ladies' heart failure symptoms. He isn't obligated to wear such a coat since most doctors tended to forgo one anyway, but wearing only his pyjama-like scrubs on a regular basis has taught him to appreciate the official air that the coat gives him.

The clinic is underbooked today due to the cardiothoracic ward being still under renovations and some of their elective cases being turfed to another hospital.

John decides to make use of his lax schedule by taking a cup of coffee into the winter garden.

No one really goes there. Even though it was originally meant for patients, the doors have been kept locked since the hospital begun skimping on security services. Some hooligan could easily hide or some patient have a stroke behind the lush greenery and no one would ever notice, unless someone deliberately checked the area every once in awhile. John doubts that the security guards ever bother.

He sometimes wanders in during on-call hours since, for some reason, his electronic key works in the double glass doors. He goes there during shifts that are quiet or when there has been a challenging case that he needs to clear his brain from.

While sipping his coffee his thoughts wander to Sherlock like they always seem to do.

Sherlock had clearly been upset and puzzled by something the night before. Upset enough that he had actually tried to do research on whatever he suspected was going on in John's head.

Could it be that Sherlock wished to publicize their relationship? John could not figure out a reason for such a desire. What could Sherlock possibly gain from such a declaration, considering that he never seemed to think that it might be beneficial to share details of his private life with colleagues or other hospital staff? A wish to introduce John to other neurosurgeons could not be a realistic reason either, because each and every one of them knew him well from work already.

When John tried to put together everything that Sherlock had said, it seemed that Sherlock had merely been trying to make an effort to be considerate to John, to give him time to sort through whatever he needed to sort through in his head before subjecting their relationship to closer scrutiny by others. Still, John couldn't shake the frightening flash of sadness in Sherlock's eyes or the bitterness in his voice when Sherlock had said he had deliberated and then decided against asking John to accompany him to the dinner.

John scrunches his now empty disposable cup into a ball. During his career he has probably been responsible for decimating entire forests due to the amount of coffee he consumes in such cups. He should get a proper mug instead. This hadn't occurred to him earlier probably because he had never felt secure enough in his post to create any permanent fixtures for himself at work. Now that he was likely to be downsized, the point was moot anyway.

Drinking such a grand amount of coffee was half habit, half necessity - a futile attempt to combat the wear and tear caused by lack of sleep and a stressful line of work. Sometimes John wondered if he would actually feel more energetic if he banished his caffeine addiction altogether.

He admired Sherlock's willpower in such matters. After John had grumbled just once about kisses tasting like an ashtray laced with menthol, Sherlock had quit smoking that same day.

His Sherlock.

John purses his lips when he realizes that no matter how hard he tries, he can't come up with any grand gesture, any intense enough shows of devotion that would match kicking a nicotine habit cold turkey.

Not that Sherlock would be likely to care about grand gestures. He was a man of intellect, of science and rationality. Surely he wouldn't even realize there was an aspect of romance to John tattooing his name across his heart or defending Sherlock's honour. Or would he?

John shakes his head, stands up and donks the balled-up cup into a nearby trash bin.

While he makes his way back to the preoperative clinic, he texts Sherlock to ask about his schedule for the rest of the day. To his surprise Sherlock proposes a lunch date.

John texts him back with a scheduling suggestion, adding 'I love you, you know' to the end of his message.

1 p.m. is fine. I'm bringing a guest, Sherlock replies.

When John arrives at the staff restaurant, the place is busy and it takes him awhile to spot Sherlock among the crowd. It helps that Sherlock is wearing a suit. According to what he had told John, Lestrade had assigned him as a guide for the otorhinolaryngological expert who had now arrived to instruct Sherlock and another fellow in the surgical techniques of his field. John reasons that they had probably spent the morning getting to know the hospital, meeting department heads and planning the next two weeks. In other words, no need for scrubs.

John spots Sherlock by the bread station, holding a tray and talking animatedly to a man in a black suit who has his back turned towards John.

This must be the visiting surgeon.

The man has raven-black hair, even darker than Sherlock's. And while Sherlock's head is a mop of pre-raphaelite curls, this man's hair is short and straight and obviously full of product. He is compact - like a weasel, John thinks. Obviously athletic but not visibly muscular. Slightly shorter than Sherlock. His perfectly tailored suit strains with his contours in a flattering manner. John wishes he had suits like that. Not even the specimens in Sherlock's lovingly selected collection are this well-tailored.

Sherlock spots John and raises his hand.

John joins them in the cashier line, having decided to pay first and then pick up his food.

"Hey," John says to Sherlock and hesitates slightly, fighting a sudden, strange impulse to give Sherlock a peck on the cheek.

The man in the expensive suit turns and comes face to face with John. He has put down his tray on the cashier table. The man extends his hand, and John takes it.

His features are sharp but less so than Sherlock's. There's a hint of a five-o-clock shadow. His brows ride high and curve towards almost feminine eyes. There's nothing feminine about him otherwise - he's handsome in an in-your-face manner, and his smile is not disarming in the least.

"You're Sherlock's beau, then? Enchanté, John, really," the man says.

His grip is firm, almost pincer-like and John forces himself not to wince.

"This is Dr James Moriarty," Sherlock informs John while passing a five-pound note to the cashier.

"It's Jim, please. We're all friends here, aren't we, Sherlock," Dr Moriarty says, rolling each letter of the name off his tongue as though sampling a delicacy.

"John Watson, with the anaesthesia service," John says, even though Sherlock likely has already given Dr Moriarty the lowdown about him. Surely the explanation has included other things besides the fact that they're intimately involved? And why would Sherlock even tell him such a thing?

They had an agreement. No telling people unless both agreed on doing so.

Is this a test of some kind, to see if John would get mad if Sherlock broke their deal? Or had Moriarty somehow just guessed right?

The man finally lets go of John's hand.

Sherlock seems wholly unaffected by what has just transpired.

"How are you liking our hospital?" John asks politely, snatching a toothpick and putting it on his tray.

"Dull, John," Sherlock scolds him and heads off to find a table.

"I must admit I am more than just a tiny bit pleased to be back in London. So many fresh faces. You must excuse my jet lag, John, I only flew back yesterday from a six-month thing in Belgrade. Dreadful landing, I must say."

John pays for his food. When he turns he again comes face to face Moriarty, who peers into his eyes at a closer distance than what is comfortable. "Will you be joining us this afternoon, John Watson of the anaesthesia services? We have an ethmoidal endoscopy booked. Sherlock seems quite keen to flex his muscles and practice on his anatomical entries," Moriarty drawls in a somewhat suggestive tone and John half-expects him to wink.

The man then swiftly turns on his heels and steers his course without hesitation towards the table Sherlock has reserved for the three of them.

If John were a less polite man, he would have rolled his eyes.

Who exactly is this perfectly tailored creep?

John does not get a chance to join Sherlock and Moriarty for an afternoon of muscle-flexing and sinus probing.

He does, however, get assigned to gas for Sherlock's first-ever acoustic neurinoma surgery that takes place four days later.

On the morning of the surgery, Sherlock pays little attention to him, because Moriarty seems to have him completely mesmerized. At least that's how it looks to John. Sherlock had paid him little mind during the past few days, burying his nose in anatomical tomes. At least he had accepted what food John had deemed fit to put in front of him.

It seems quite understandable that Dr Moriarty will need to get his hands dirty in this case since it's Sherlocks first, assisting throughout the proceedings and taking over during more difficult passages.

Still, it's hard for John to see how instructional purposes would require Moriarty to have his bloody hands all over Sherlock, all the time.

He watches the man's fingers slide along Sherlock's as he hands over a pair of surgical forceps. To John it seems as though the man is holding onto the instrument a moment longer than is necessary but not long enough to cause all that much suspicion in untrained eyes. It's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it type of thing.

John doesn't miss an inch of it, while Sherlock seems to be infuriatingly oblivious to this strange game. If anything, Sherlock merely seems flattered by the attention of such a well-regarded expert in the field.

"Try to avoid touching the locus of Kiesselbach with the instruments to avoid a nosebleed when you maneuver around. They do so mess up your playing field," Moriarty complains dramatically.

John has looked Dr James Moriarty up on the web. He gets invited to most large ORL conferences, usually as a keynote speaker. He has pioneered several surgical techniques, and has been featured in several business magazines since his business ventures have been successful enough to make him exorbitantly wealthy for a doctor. Explains all those prohibitively expensive suits that fit like a sodding condom, John had thought to himself.

Moriarty's surgical skills are clearly formidable, and offering Sherlock a chance to learn from such a surgeon is like dangling a carrot in front of him while simultaneously presenting a dare. A chance to master a whole new field of surgical expertise is making Sherlock behave like a child in a sweet shop, giddy at the unwrapping of every new anatomical present contained within the bony landscape of a cranium. John can't help but smile at his enthusiasm. The dark cloud that's been hanging over him seems to have at least momentarily floated away.

Watching Sherlock enjoying himself so much would have made John happy, if only he wasn't being driven up the wall by their current company.

Moriarty's lips curl into a smile right next to Sherlock's ear, and he lets his gaze wander over the draped patient all the way to the vicinity of the anaesthesia workstation. After John's and his gazes lock, Moriarty keeps his eyes fixed onto John's disapproving gaze while he whispers something in Sherlock's ear.

No one else in the OR seems to notice what happens next, but John does, and blood rings in his ears.

Underneath his surgical mask, Sherlock is now blushing.

John is the only one who is allowed to witness that. Ever.

Dr James Moriarty is smiling like a hyena, still watching John.

The syringe filled with ephedrine between John's fingers groans as the plastic bends in his unconsciously hardened grip.

This is not on.

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 **Notes:**

Kiesselbach's plexus is a place in the nose where several major blood vessels converge. Ninety percent of nosebleeds originate from it. It is named after Dr Wilhelm Kiesselbach, a German otorhinolaryngologist, who published a paper on it in 1884. How could I possibly resist such an opportunity for a chapter title?


	5. Going for the jugular

"I gave you everything!" Sherlock wails, and tears at his curls in frustration. Now they look even more unruly than usual. "Everything I possibly could, everything you could conceivably want, but everything is still always somehow wrong and you don't want any of it and I don't know what to do!"

John is speechless as he stands in the kitchen, the cup of lukewarm coffee in his hand competely forgotten.

Sherlock is pacing around the dining room, the hems of his dressing gown flapping wildly.

They still have a few minutes until they need to leave for work the latest, but if His Highness won't start pulling on his trousers John is considering leaving without him.

Sherlock has been in a major strop for the past few days. It had begun, when John had failed to remind him that he was on call the previous Saturday. As a result Sherlock had had to hurry to the hospital after an irate colleague, who had been assigned the previous shift, had called him to ask what the bloody hell was taking so long. John had informed Sherlock in no uncertain terms that he was not Sherlock's goddamned servent or secretary. That had somehow, apparently, opened a can of worms.

Something has been wrong for a while now and they need to air the dirty laundry sooner or later. John is certain none of this has actually anything to do with forgetting call.

"I'm happy, John! I'm so happy it's disgusting but you're not! I'm not even allowed to tell anyone that I have you! How is it that you don't want anyone to know about me even though you claim I am such a sight to behold? None of it even matters because you-" Sherlock dissolves into actual sobs, which is forcing him to pause his tirade, "You don't- Don't probably even want me because you're - You're ashamed of me! Of us! Because God forbid you end up with some freak queer instead of some respectable woman who wouldn't challenge your prejudices!"

Sherlock turns on his heels and prepares to march into the bathroom, running the side of his palm angrily across his eyes and then flinging the moisture away with an aggressive flick of his hand.

John reaches out to stop Sherlock and pull him closer, but Sherlock dances out of his grip. He does slow his steps, seemingly unsure what to do with himself.

John swallows. "That's not true. You know it's not. We agreed to take it slow-"

"Not very masculine, is it, taking things slowly," Sherlock retorts back venomously.

John decides to ignore that for now even though as far as blows go, it had been a very low one. Sherlock knows he's still trying to come to terms with this new life of his.

"Don't you dare try to make this about me! I just want us," John tells Sherlock is a tone that he wants to sound reassuring and pleading but ends up being quite accusing, "Just us and not just you sticking me in whatever slot in your life you think I fit into best!" John is now yelling, which wasn't his intention but this has been a long time coming and damn it if John always has to be the calm and mature one. "Stop making me happy all on your own and start helping me in making the both of us happy for a change!"

Maybe Sherlock's carefully calculated insult had hit him more heavily than he'd realized.

"I don't know how!" Sherlock exclaims, looking frustrated.

Before John manages to formulate any kind of a reply, Sherlock retreats to the bathroom and locks the door.

John glances at the digital clock on the microwave screen. He's going to be late. He sighs, grabs his keys and his coat and walks out.

John wishes he could go home that afternoon to attempt a more constructive discussion on the state of their relationship, but of course he's on call again.

The thought of sorting out the usual Friday night spoil of drunks with head injuries, neglected elderly citizens with septic abdominal infections, and the rest of the usual OR case load requiring anaesthesia services is even less enticing than usual.

At least work will be a good distraction, buy him some time to figure out how to fix the mess at home.

They're both first-timers in a great many things. Sherlock has never had a serious relationship with anyone. John has never had a serious relationship with anyone that he was this serious about.

And neither of them had ever faced another man on the opposite side of a bed, before the day that they had moved in and Sherlock had repeated his earlier suggestion that they use the small downstairs room for storage and the master bedroom for other things.

He had used those actual words but made them sound so particular that John had not had any trouble following his train of thought.

The first time that Sherlock had made his intentions clear had been while they'd been having lunch at work, but the subject had been sort of buried for weeks afterwards, and John had begun to suspect Sherlock wasn't actually brave enough to follow through. Their first night together had been careful - in a way even chaste, fumbling around in the dark like a bunch of teenagers.

They've done fine so far, learning as they go, but it's clear Sherlock wants more. No, scratch that, Sherlock wants all of it.

John sighs and trots down the stairs to change into a fresh pair of scrubs before his on-call shift starts. His current scrub trousers are sporting a small damp patch of spinal fluid on the left knee, and his scrub top is sweaty enough to warrant being swapped for a fresh one.

Most doctors who use the same basement locker room have already hurried home for the weekend.

When John flings open the door to the locker lounge, he becomes face to face with Dr Philip Anderson, wearing a dismayed expression. Anderson bites his lip as though he's about to say something important.

Great, John thinks. Just what he needs, an earful of bullshit from Anderson when he's already in a bad enough mood.

"So it's you, then," Anderson says. It's not really a question, more of a resigned aknowledgement.

"Excuse me?" John asks while flinging his used scrub shirt into the laundry basket.

"My rival for the Operative Clinical Director post," Anderson tells him as though reminding him of something rather obvious.

Sherlock does this all the time, spouting facts at John that he assumes John already knows.

John has heard talk that the current Clinical Director of Operative Services, who also happens to be the department head of the anaesthesia services, is about to retire. John is sure the replacement will be selected from the senior consultant pool. Never in a million years would John even consider putting his name into the game. They'd probably laugh at him.

Maybe Anderson is just fishing blindly to find out who the other candidates are. John isn't surprised in the least, that the power-hungry Anderson would try to inch his way into the post with this sort of subterfuge.

Anderson wouldn't have many backers, that was certain. Not a popular guy.

John rubs his eyes and yawns. Whatever Anderson is on about, he doesn't care. Probably one of the man's typical mind games.

John is not in the mood.

They change clothes in silence. When John is about to walk out of the lounge, Anderson calls out his name.

"Yeah?" John turns, ready to dismiss the idiot as quickly as he can so he can get back to work.

Anderson's expression is uncharacteristically hesitant. He doesn't look like he's about to deliberately yank John's chain.

"Have you seen Sherlock this afternoon?" Anderson asks.

John shakes his head. "I'm on call and I know you lot have some sort of a departmental wine and cheese assembly booked with Dr Moriarty at four, since it's his last day visiting."

John is grateful for the small joy of Moriarty leaving. He and Sherlock have enough problems without that creep hanging around.

"That's the thing. I heard him make plans with Sherlock to go out for cocktails afterwards."

John raises his brows.

How is this any business of Anderson's? Is the arsehole trying to rile his completely imaginary Clinical Director post rival up by insinuating Sherlock might be about to cheat on him?

"So what? Sherlock hates bars. And pubs. And clubs. According to him they're too loud and too full of idiots. He's probably just trying to be polite."

Not that being polite sounds like Sherlock at all. Ever.

John is still not convinced that he has all that much to worry about.

Anderson actually looks a bit pained and apologetic. He scratches the side of his nose and then regards John with a severe expression. "Look, I know theres no love lost between me and Holmes, but I still think you need to know a bit about what happened when I worked with Moriarty in Leeds. I was a registrar, he was a consultant. I had a best mate who was a registrar for ORL. We went through uni together. He got mixed up with Moriarty somehow. Before I could do anything about it, he was doing heroin and after he'd gotten in over his head in some pretty fucking shady business of Moriarty's, he killed himself. Or at least that's what the coroner's report said."

John doesn't know what to say. He's not surprised that Moriarty's not an upstanding citizen, but still. What is he supposed to do with this sort of information?

"Sorry about your mate," John says, "But it's just a dinner and maybe some drinks. Sherlock can take care of himself."

Anderson looks adamant. "I always wondered how the fuck Moriarty got him into his bed in the first place. Jamie wasn't like that, ever. I've got no proof and Jamie refused to talk about it, really clammed up when I tried to bring it up, but I always thought he acted really weird when he got back to the dorms the following morning."

John inhales and tries to will his suddenly frantic heart to calm down.

Anderson takes a step back and grabs his bag. "I get it, you're not his keeper. I'm still telling you that Moriarty's way more dangerous than he looks, and even though I fucking hate Holmes' guts, no good surgeon deserves to be wrecked like what he did to Jamie." Anderson sighs and looks sad as though remembering something. "He's had his hands all over Holmes for two weeks. You must've noticed," Anderson points out to John.

Has he ever.

With a final, almost sympathetic glance at John, Anderson leaves.

John stands in the empty lounge, the fingers of his right hand clenching into a fist.

"Right," John then says to noone in particular and straightens his spine.

He quickly rummages around his pocket for his mobile.

He speed dials one of the senior anaesthesia consultants from the gastro service he knows well. "What's up, Mansoor? Look, mate, I'm so sorry to spring this on you on a second's notice but I really, really need to call in my favour for that World Cup thing. I need you to cover call for me for a while. Yeah, right now would be perfect. Until eight? I'll be back by then. Cheers," John says in a falsely positive and annoyingly perky tone that doesn't reflect his level of worry at all, and starts tearing off his scrubs.


	6. Putting the foot down

John has never been very keen on the idea of tracking people through their phones. Lord knows they are watched carefully enough by Sherlock's brother, who seems to be some sort of a secret agent.

This time, however, John is more than grateful for such a possibility. He fires up 'Find my friends' on his iPhone and lets out an audible exhalation in relief when a bluish dot appears, placing Sherlock somewhere in central Soho.

John feels like sitting on hot coals while he waits for the fellow consultant he'd called in to show up and take over. After a few minutes his phone rings, and John nearly drops it when trying to pound the right button to accept the call, hoping it's Sherlock.

No such luck. It's just their landlord, Dr Allen Baxter, inquiring about a missing rent check. Sherlock was supposed to have sorted it out weeks ago. John ought to be mad but worry overrides whatever disgruntlement he might have over such a trivial matter.

Dr Baxter agrees to give Sherlock a call about the check in a few days, and then rambles on, complaining about how difficult it is to get rid of fish tanks. His dearly departed wife had kept tropical fish and after her death Dr Baxter had, with a heavy heart, decided to get rid of them since he had no idea how to look after such pets and his long working hours meant that he wouldn't be around much to enjoy them. He'd tried to unload one of the tanks on Sherlock and John, but John had wiggled out of the responsibility by telling Dr Baxter that Sherlock would probably use the poor creatures for some sorts of experiments.

A few minutes after John gets off the phone with Dr Baxter, his fellow anaesthetist Dr Mansoor Pahlavi arrives and after tossing the man his on-call phone, John practically runs out of the hospital.

It's early Friday evening, so John opts for the tube as a faster option to a cab and heads downtown on the Northern Line.

The pounding beat in the club feels like a living being, the drums vibrating in John's ribcage even though he hasn't even actually entered yet. John braces himself, nodding to the bouncer opening the door to him, and walks in.

The club floor is already packed. It's an upmarket place mostly catering to a gay crowd, but according to Time Out it's currently the number one choice for all manner of A-list Londoneers.

A raised area holds the DJ in a metallic cage. Green lasers are sweeping the mass of swaying and gyrating bodies in the dancefloor.

John is forced to dodge and sidestep to avoid bumping into people as he begins wandering around, eyes scanning the edges of the dancefloor. He's certain his ears will be ringing after he gets out of this place.

He's happy to have worn his short leather coat that day instead of his parka - it lets him blend in well enough. Sherlock can convinced him to buy it, and after an initial reluctance it has become a favourite of John's.

After a few minutes of wandering around John starts to get frustrated. He has checked all the table areas on the sides where he thinks he's most likely to find Sherlock but to no avail. He's not at any of the long bar counters either.

John turns around a full circle, scanning the crowd and then checks his phone again. His own dot on the map is now exactly where Sherlock's blue one is hovering. This has got to be the right place. John slides the phone back into his pocket.

He pushes his way deeper into the dancing crowd that is at its thickest close to a large set of speakers. The bass pulses so intensely John feels as though it's giving his heart extra beats.

Suddenly he sees Sherlock.

Dancing with James Moriarty.

Dancing like he's possessed by a demon.

John stops in his tracks, both alarmed and mesmerized.

Sherlock has abandoned his jacket and his shirt hangs untucked, sweaty and clinging to his torso. His eyes are closed as he moves in perfect synchrony with both the music and Moriarty, whose fingers are digging into his hips from behind. Sherlock's arms are stretched towards the ceiling, fingers curling and uncurling. He's paler than usual. His sags towards his right shoulder when Moriarty presses his lips to the opposite side of his neck. Sherlock's lips part and he closes his eyes, his movements - their movements - somehow not faltering.

To John's relief the track seems to be ending and the music quiets down for a moment. Around him, excited chatter starts building up amongst the crowd. It's a perfect opportunity for John to stride up to Sherlock and Moriarty.

Sherlock opens his eyes when John grabs his arm. Moriarty had noticed him approach but hasn't moved a muscle. He's regarding John with a mocking, amused expression, hands still around Sherlock.

"Had enough fun, then?" John asks loudly to be heard over the crowd. His tone is more resigned than angry, but the look he gives Moriarty is perfectly designed to tell the man to back off or he'll regret it gravely.

Sherlock is staring at him, saying nothing. Then he giggles. "Look, James," he says, pointing a finger at John, who has crossed his arms, "John's come to keep us company."

"More the merrier," Moriarty says, lips splaying into a triumphant grin over John's dismay. He's sizing John up with his gaze and doesn't seem intimidated in the least, but he does let go of Sherlock, who stumbles a bit.

John grabs hold of Sherlock and helps him steady himself. Holding Sherlock by the biceps, he stands on his toes to get a closer look at Sherlock in the dim lighting. Sherlock's eyes look slightly glassy and unfocused, and he's breathing so rapidly he's nearly hyperventilating. His pupils look wide as saucers. John lets go, swerves around and faces Moriarty.

"What the FUCK have you given him? Hmm?"

John has had enough. As much as he usually frowns upon physical violence in solving conflicts within the medical community, and had once reported Anderson for decking Sherlock, he's too angry to waste a second thinking about right and wrong.

Moriarty never even sees it coming.

Before anyone actually realizes what's going on, John is rubbing his rapidly swelling fist, and Moriarty is sitting on the floor, looking dazed and holding his chin.

Sherlock seems to be even more oblivious to what has happened than anyone else, having begun a fascinating visual study of the veins on the back of his hand while leaning onto a trash bin.

John circles an arm firmly around Sherlock's waist, and starts dragging him towards the exit.

"Just for the record, Johnny-boy, nobody thinks you'll be sticking 'round long-term anyway," Moriarty's taunting tenor calls after them.

"Who's that?" inquires Sherlock, squinting at Moriarty while holding onto John's lapels for fortification.

Once they get outside into the less than fresh air of a Friday night in Soho, John resolutely hails a cab and shoves Sherlock into the back seat.

"King's College Hospital, please," he tells the cabbie.

"What's the time, John?" Sherlock asks. John takes his pulse. At least 120.

"Around seven."

"Why are we going to King's? I've not got work, John, I've just left," Sherlock informs him, sliding down in his seat like a wet noodle. "Take me home," he whines.

He tries to kiss John on the cheek but misses and lands face-first against John's knee.

"Jesus," John says and maneuvers him back into a sitting position.

According to what Sherlock had told John of his teenage and his early twenties, opiates had been his chosen narcotic. John is almost certain the what's currently coursing through his veins is cocaine. A heavy dose of it. Probably combined with something else that John will have a harder time identifying. He makes a mental note to get blood drawn.

A trickle of blood suddenly makes it way down from Sherlock's nose into his half-open mouth. John curses loudly, digs out a handkerchief and presses it onto Sherlock's face. Cocaine confirmed, then. Snorting means that Sherlock has ingested at least some of it voluntarily. Before or after being dosed with something else?

Luckily the nosebleed stops quickly. John opens a window and throws the bloodied handkerchief out.

He then idly watches the lights of London whizz past while trying to figure out what to do with Sherlock.

It's a quarter past seven in the evening. Mansoor had agreed to cover for John until 8 p.m. since at that time he would have to go and pick his kid up from soccer practice.

John can't possibly leave Sherlock alone in their apartment. Not without knowing what he'd been given. Not without monitoring him in case a cardiac arrhythmia or something worse happened.

He also can't bring himself to sign Sherlock into the A&E department - that would open a whole new can of worms in terms of Sherlock's past and current reputation, plus Sherlock would murder him afterwards.

He needs a plan.

By the time they arrive at King's College, Sherlock hasn't sobered up one bit. John reasons that the dose given to him is likely to have been substantial. He's also getting increasingly convinced that this state is the end result of several different substances.

John remembers the sadness in Anderson's eyes when he had been telling John about his dear friend.

Moriarty needs to be stopped.

The car halts in front of the hospital. John pays the cabbie and then manhandles Sherlock out of the cab. John is practically carrying him, because instead of standing up he's trying to pick at the skin on his knee, claiming that there's a beetle inside.

John's eyes flit from the inviting lights of the A&E entrance to an unlit staff entrance that they're standing close to. Sherlock manages to rediscover some of his ability to walk, and they get to the entrance.

One of the security guards, Justin, who John knows has an EMT licence in addition to his current job, opens the staff entrance door just as John is trying to find his electronic passkey and prevent Sherlock from wandering off at the same time.

John has always thought of Justin as a nice and trustworthy bloke. They've played darts a couple of times.

Justin gives them an amused glance that could be roughly translated as 'yikes' as they pass each other in the doorway. As a security guard he has likely witnessed even stranger things in the off hours.

John shoves Sherlock against the wall for support and keeps him in place with an outstretched arm. John then grabs Justin's sleeve just as the man is about to walk out into the night.

"Hey mate, how would you fancy earning a hundred quid?" John asks.

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 **Notes:**

There actually isn't a tube line that runs very close to King's College. The Northern Line is the closest.

Of course you'd want to know what song is playing in the club when John sweeps in to save Sherlock from the clutches of Moriarty, wouldn't you? It's Madonna's "Die Another Day". It's danger disco with Sherlockean violins and a Bond vibe. Absolute perfection for this.


	7. Head over heels

Half an hour later, John steps back to admire his handiwork. They're in the dermatology outpatient clinic, in a room which during office hours is used for UV light treatment. John had chosen it since noone would wander in there during the weekend, the room features cardiac monitoring equipment and it has a sturdy bed.

Justin, now wearing a set of ill-fitting scrubs instead of his usual security guard's garb, is currently trying to wiggle a blood pressure cuff onto Sherlock's arm. Sherlock is half-sitting, half-lying down on the gurney, screaming bloody murder after John had made use of a pair of cuffs belonging to Justin's guard kit to ensure there would be no escaping until the combination of cocaine and God-knows-what had left his system.

John had unceremoniously injected Sherlock with both naloxone and flumazenil, hoping to flush out at least some of what Moriarty had slipped into his drink or otherwise forced Sherlock to ingest. These antidotes didn't seem to have much effect.

"It's gonna be a long night," John warns Justin, who's already wiping sweat off his brow.

"For a hundred quid, this is easy," Justin tells him.

John has witnessed Justin haul out troublemakers twice his size from A&E and he isn't the least bit of worried about Justin being able to handle Sherlock.

John leans onto the bed rail. Sherlock stops the racket he's making and regards John with keen interest. "Let me go," Sherlock suggests.

"No. You're high as a bloody kite. I have to go and work. Justin will call the police in about three hours if you're lucid so we can start sorting out what happened."

John has already drawn up a set of toxicology samples from a vein Sherlock's arm. They will need to be replicated later. John will spare Sherlock from ending up with official A&E records of his visit, but as for involving the police, John is adamant.

Moriarty will be stopped.

John will stop him.

Because noone, noone gets to do this to his Sherlock.

The thought of James Moriarty stealing from Sherlock what Sherlock had clearly wanted to experience for the first time in his life with John, makes him sick to his stomach.

"Can't you stay with me then," Sherlock mumbles and bats his eyelashes.

John's indignation melts into oblivion.

Sherlock is now looking at him in a way that leaves nothing to the imagination, licking his lower lip. "Won't you... Stay?" he repeats, loading the words with such downright comedic innuendo that John rocks back on his heels and rolls his eyes, laughing.

Justin sits down, poker face well utilized.

"Call the anaesthesia emergency number if there's anything you need," John tells Justin.

Justin nods in aknowledgement. "Sure thing, Dr Watson."

"Just call me John. And in case you haven't met before, this is my boyfriend, Sherlock."

Saying it out loud wasn't all that difficult, was it?

John's phone rings. It's the OR floor supervisor. He's probably needed in theatre.

John steals a last glance at an indignantly huffing and eye-rolling Sherlock who has slumped against the bed, and hurries off to do his duty.

It's a tough night for all three of them. After a couple of hours of running around the OR floor John gets a chance to tear himself away to check on Sherlock and Justin.

He finds them kneeling in the ensuite of the phototherapy room, crouched over the toilet seat. Sherlock is throwing up with Justin holding him by the shoulders to keep him from keeling over.

"He says that the bugs have stopped crawling," Justin tells John, "I think he's coming down from it now."

"Good. Call the police in two hours. Let me know when they get here so I can give a statement, too. And tell them to come in through the staff entrance. If they start asking 'round A&E we'll be in deep shit."

"I assume you have your reasons for not signing him properly into A&E?" Justin asks and accepts John's nod as a sufficient explanation.

"Bed," Sherlock gasps, and attempts to stands up onto shaky feet. Justin grabs him in a fireman's carry as though it's the most normal thing in the world and delivers Sherlock gently back onto the bed.

John decides he's very, very fond of Justin right now.

Sherlock's eyes are closed. John lowers the bed's left railing and sits down on the edge of the mattress. Justin hooks Sherlock back up to the monitors. He's not even putting up a fight anymore. His heart is still elevated but not tachycardic. Blood pressure is back to normal. John breathes a sigh of relief.

"How are you feeling?" he asks.

Sherlock's eyes flutter open. He's ashen grey and his hands are shaking. "Like something terrible is about to happen and I have no idea what. Also, some animal has burrowed into my skull and is clawing around."

"Residual paranoia, I'd say. It'll pass. I think it's mostly the cocaine doing it. You should try and get some sleep," John tells him quietly and runs his fingers through Sherlock's sweaty black curls. He takes care not to press his fingers too deep into Sherlock's scalp because he knows it's Sherlock's achilles' heel - his scalp is astoundingly sensitive and when John employs this bit of information just right, he can make Sherlock beg both for mercy and for more at the same time. Now is not the time, especially not with Justin watching them quietly.

At four in the morning, John shuffles back to the dermatology corridor. The trickle of patients into A&E has finally slowed down so it's less likely he'll be called in before morning to tend to a critically ill or injured patient. The OR floor is now empty, too since there are no urgent operations lined up at the moment.

Justin is reading a magazine while sitting in a chair in the hallway. The door to the phototherapy room is closed but not locked. Justin looks up when John walks up to him and yawns. It's contagious.

"He was that complaining my thinking is keeping him awake," Justin chuckles.

"That sounds like the Sherlock I know," John snorts and rubs his arms. When he's tired enough he always starts feeling colder than he actually is. Usually he brings an old cardigan from home for on-call shifts but he'd been so upset with Sherlock he had forgotten to grab one.

He quietly opens the door next to Justin's chair and peeks in.

The room is dark. The windows reflects some light from passing cars and in this dim glow John can make out Sherlock's sleeping form on the bed, his chest now moving up and down in a much slower rhytm than during those unfortunate hours after leaving the club.

The police had been by after midnight.

John had talked to them first and then they'd taken a statement from a somewhat composed Sherlock. The last thing he remembered was feeling significantly more inebriated than he should have after only having downed the Dirty Martini Moriarty had treated him to. As flattered as he had been by the attention lavished on him by Moriarty, he had been contemplating an honourable excuse to leave. He has a vague memory of going to the men's room, feeling slightly faint and very odd in there, and then suddenly deciding that Moriarty's offer of cocaine had obviously been the best idea in the history of humanity.

The officers had packed the blood samples John had drawn into an official forensics kit. John had told them that there was another staff member with potentially important information to the investigation, but that John would talk to him first before divulging his idendity.

John is quite certain that Anderson will be be game to try and bring Moriarty to justice, but he wants to be polite and ask first - Anderson had, after all, helped John even though he had been under no obligation whatsoever to do such a thing.

John steps back, leaving the door ajar and turns to Justin. "I'll take it from here. This is yours," John says and passes Justin a crumpled wad of twenties from his pocket. He'd popped down to the ATM in the adjoining building between surgeries.

Justin takes the bills, looking tired. "Take care, John," he says and wanders off towards the lifts.

John slips back into the room, lowers the bed railings once again and gathers Sherlock into his arms. The man is sleeping deeply and merely mumbles something when John maneuvers him into a position in which he is certain he can manage to carry Sherlock up a flight of stairs to the anaesthesia on-call room. The bed there is big enough for two.

John wakes up a little past nine in the morning when the on-call phone rings. The caller is the next on-call shifter who's standing right outside the door, not wanting to barge in in case John isn't dressed.

John stumbles out of bed, haphazardly pulls on his scrubs and then tiptoes to the door. He opens it just a bit, quickly passes his on-call phone to Dr Lucy Cole and informs her that he's going to use the on-call room for a post-call nap, which is not that uncommon a habit.

Once Dr Cole has disappeared down the hall, John locks the door, discards his scrubs again and slips back into bed.

He wonders idly if Sherlock will be feeling normal enough for the plan John has in mind. Even if he isn't, John hopes he will approciate the sentiment anyway.

Sherlock had accused him for wanting to keep their private life completely separate from their working environment and that the reason for this was embarrassment. John is going to disprove that, if Sherlock is willing. As for how, John thinks he knows just the thing.

Sherlock stirs when John begins walking his fingers down his spine. He turns around and regards John with a bleary expression.

"Morning, gorgeous," John says, smiling.

Sherlock swallows and coughs. "Are you still on call? What's the time? Do you need to go?"

John quickly moistens a dry patch on his upper lip with his tongue. The heavy air conditioning often makes him feels as though he's run a marathon across the Sahara. "I'm off duty now. Not a single call after four. How are you?"

"Fine," Sherlock dismisses. His gaze roams around the room, trying to catalogue these unfamiliar surroundings. "I remember you carrying me, then nothing," Sherlock tells him almost accusingly.

"Well you didn't do a whole lot of anything after that," John says, smiling and leaning in for a kiss. Trust Sherlock to disapprove of scoring a normal amount of sleep.

"You're being rather affectionate, considering we're technically at work," Sherlock points out and sits up. John wrestles him back down onto his back.

"Where do you think you're going?" John asks in a teasing tone.

"Home, presumably." Sherlock's gaze wanders to the ceiling. He has suddenly become a bit timid in John's eyes.

"How are you feeling? Honestly?"

"Are you going to be asking that every five minutes for how long exactly? Please tell me so I can employ a pair of earplugs until then," Sherlock says in an exasperated tone.

"I'm going to be repeating myself until you give me a proper answer." John begins unbuttoning Sherlock's dress shirt.

He and Justin never did bother to undress Sherlock. At first it would have been too difficult, and once Sherlock had calmed down they still decided not to bother Sherlock any more than they absolutely had to. A crumpled shirt had been the least of Sherlock's worries last night.

"Tired. Muscles sore. Nose congested."

"Not too bad, then," John concludes.

Sherlock looks wary but intrigued, as though he's had some sort of an epiphany. "You're hiding something."

"Kind of. In all seriousness, though, first we need to talk."

Sherlock groans and rolls his eyes. "Why?"

"You were upset with me yesterday."

"Well that was before you rode in on your high horse to the club."

"High horse? High horse? Fucking hell, Sherlock, I was just trying to-"

Sherlock flashes him a sly smile to reveal he was just having John on.

"I will admit that I'm rather taken with this chivalrous streak of yours," Sherlock tells him and entwines his fingers with John's. It seems that whatever fury Sherlock had been carrying has completely dissipated.

"Does that mean you would be up for a little... experimentation?" John asks.

Sherlock's gaze narrows. "You'll have to be more specific."

John untangles his fingers and sticks his hand under his pillow. When he pulls it back out, he's holding a packet of Durexes between his thumg and his forefinger. "Look what I nicked from the Sexual Health Unit waiting room."

Sherlock's pupils dilate slightly and this time the culprit is decidedly not cocaine. When he voices no protest, John sits up and continues the delicate operation is ridding Sherlock from the rest of his clothing. "I love you," he whispers, his lips briefly ghosting on Sherlock's shoulder before he plants a kiss there.

Sherlock is looking at John with a mixture of apprehension and adoration. John decides that he has never seen anything so lovely as Sherlock right at this moment.

"You ripping my clothes off in a darkened on-call room. People might talk," Sherlock points out.

"I should fucking hope so," John shoots back, and buries his head between Sherlock's thighs.

"How would you react if I became the boss?" John ventures to ask an hour later, while they're lying across the bed in postcoital bliss, the hospital-issue sheets underneath them now sweaty and crumpled.

"Judging by what has just transpired, in certain ways you already are the boss", Sherlock points out.

"I wasn't talking about sex, you dolt", John tells him and leans over to plant a kiss on Sherlock's forehead.

"What then?" Sherlock turns to his side to face John, leaning his chin on his palm. The sheet slides to the side, revealing half of his chest. John smiles and runs his fingers along Sherlock's right collarbone, eliciting a shiver.

"There's a rumour that I'd be Anderson's rival for Clinical Director."

Sherlock frowns, taking in this bit of information. "I've actually heard that one a couple of times."

John is taken aback. Perhaps the rumour is not just Anderson's attempt at cementing his position, after all.

"Why would I mind? You'd be in a perfect position to make certain changes in this department so that the service could run more to my liking. I could influence you," Sherlock muses deviously.

John tugs at a handful of his curls playfully. "I'm not a doormat, you know. I'm not here to be your errand boy or let you do whatever you like."

"Well, you've certainly proven that recently," Sherlock says pointedly, flings away the sheet that's covering John's lower torso, and proceeds to prove that when it comes to certain private activities, John will still let him do exactly what he wants.

The next Monday afternoon John attends the meeting he's been dreading, but recently also looking forward to, thanks to the possibility that he might not be losing his job after all.

In attendance are the current Clinical Director of Operative Services and head of the anaestesia unit, professor Martha Hudson; Dr Lestrade as the head of neurosurgery, and the chairman of the hospital's board of directors who John has never met before.

The rumour mill's offerings turn out to be true - John is asked to consider stepping up to the position of Clinical Director of Operative Services, now that Professor Hudson is retiring. He is told that since it's not a strictly academic position, they are looking for an individual with outstanding leadership skills and a strong clinical skillset. "We need someone who gets along the staff and who's able to keep doctors from tearing each other's throats out," Lestrade explains. "You've managed to tame even Dr Holmes. That's quite a feat."

John tries to keep a straight face. Tame indeed. The methods he has lately employed in Sherlock's case are hardly ones he could ever use in the workplace.

After a lengthy discussion about hours, pay and other practicalities, John says yes to the job offer.

The enjoy a cup of tea before the meeting ends. After pushing away his cup, swallowing and straightening his spine, John clears his throat and explains that in the spirit of full disclosure he needs to inform those present that he's romantically involved with one of his future subordinates.

Professor Hudson laughs and Dr Lestrade chuckles.

"Do you seriously think our Mr Modesty was capable of keeping that fact to himself? We've known for a while, John, and it's not a problem since Holmes was already a consultant when he begun his training here. That means he hasn't technically been your subordinate until now," Dr Lestrade says.

John has nothing to add. They all shake hands and trickle out of the meeting room.

John is happy.

Sherlock is happy.

Anderson is royally pissed off for missing out on the promotion, but he still agrees to talk to the police. "It's for Jamie's sake, not yours," he scoffs when John gives him the phone number of the DI handling the case.

Two weeks later, the tabloids have a field day when "a renowned otorhinolaryngologist is arrested for an astounding series of high crimes". Sherlock agrees to testify, pointing out that now that his boyfriend is the Clinical Director noone can kick him out for having questionable taste in men. The five confused urological nurses he attempts to analyze this issue with seem to agree before scampering away promptly.

All in all, everything is exactly as it should be.

(And after some very physically taxing negotiations, Sherlock finally agrees to book them into a resort in the Seychelles for the holidays.)

 **\- The End -**


End file.
